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Wednesday, 27 August 2014

Votre Billet, Monsieur?

Tasker Dunham remembers an embarrassing incident during a school trip to Belgium

I will never forget the French word for ticket as long as I
live. It was clipped into my memory on the way home from Belgium in 1965.

I had been staying over Easter with a Belgian family on a school
exchange visit. They had made sure I caught the right train at Charleroi, and I
had waved them goodbye with feelings of both relief at no longer having to
struggle in French all the time, and sadness because I had had a great time and
would miss them. But having been there for two and a half weeks on my own, I was
looking forward to seeing English people again.

My French had improved a lot, although not enough to be completely aware
of all that was going on. Sometimes it seemed that things just happened without
forewarning. We might be going out sightseeing, or into town, or to the cinema,
or to visit someone. You rarely knew what each moment would bring. At the age of
fifteen it seemed easiest to cultivate equanimity, a passive acceptance of it
all. It was an attitude that served me well that morning.

I was to join the rest of my Yorkshire school party at
Bruxelles-Midi. After less than thirty miles, or more properly I should say
after forty five kilometres as it was a Belgian train, we reached Brussels and started
to slow down. The train came to a stop. I anxiously peered out to read the
station name. “No, not this one,” I decided. It said Brussel-Zuid. Everyone
else got out, but I sat watching the bustling foreign platform, quietly waiting
for the train to move on to the next stop. It was a big mistake.

The problem is that Belgium is a two-nation country. There
are the Walloons who speak French and live mainly to the south of Brussels
where I had been staying, and the Flemish or Belgian-Dutch speakers who live to
the north. The two nations are suspicious of each other, and where they
intersect, as in Brussels, signs are written in both languages to help minimise
the antipathy. The station name, Brussel-Zuid, appeared to be Flemish for
Brussels South, but I wanted Bruxelles-Midi, which I stupidly decided must mean
Brussels Central. I should have known better. Just a rudimentary knowledge of
the French language is sufficient to realise how very wrong this is. I must
have left my French back in Charleroi in my eagerness to get home.

I knew something was not quite right as soon as the train
started to move. The names on the station totems were alternately in Flemish
and French, Flemish and French, Brussel-Zuid and Bruxelles-Midi, Brussel-Zuid
and Bruxelles-Midi. With helpless, nervous, horror, I realised they were the same station. The names switched in time with the clickety-click of the
wheels as the train picked up speed. Not only do the two kinds of Belgians
disagree about which language they speak, they cannot even decide what this
particular station should be called. It’s even worse than the problems we English
have in Wales!

‘Midi’ is of course French for ‘mid-day’. It is one
of the first words you learn, as in après-midi, meaning afternoon. Because the
sun is in the south at noon, the French-speaking Belgians in their wisdom call
the southern station Bruxelles-Midi. Where else would you find such logic? I
have never understood why Europeans are allowed to retain eccentricities like
this, yet we, in preparation for entry into the Common Market as it used to be called,
gave up our shillings and pence, and then our pounds and ounces. We should have
kept them. They caused us no difficulty at all, but they were perfect for
confusing the French.

I was now on the express train to Antwerp. Not only that,
but the train now seemed to contain only Flemish speaking people who I
perceived unlikely to be helpful towards someone attempting to speak in French.

I caught the attention of a smartly dressed but kindly-looking
young woman sitting opposite me. With an awkward and badly modulated “Excusez-moi, Madamoiselle”, which silenced the whole carriage, I asked anxiously
in French whether the station we had just left was Bruxelles-Midi. Fortunately,
she answered in a French accent I was able to follow. As the train shot through
another station without stopping she confirmed that it was.

“Ce que je fais maintenant?” (What do I do now?), I
asked with resignation.

“Descendre ici” (Get off here) she said. It was a considerable
relief to be told there was another stop before Antwerp, at Brussel-Noord
(Bruxelles-Nord or Brussels North).

I left the train. This was a much quieter station. I sat on
a seat with my luggage on the deserted platform, and before too long another
train came in the opposite direction. I got on, sat down, and fiddled nervously
with the ticket inside my trouser pocket. My sweaty-handed bending and turning
quickly transformed it into an illegible, misshapen pulp. For all I knew, the
train could have been going anywhere. I just hoped it was going back to
Bruxelles-Midi and not straight to somewhere in Germany or France. As I said,
if you were fifteen, on your own in Belgium in 1965, unable to understand much
of what was going on, the only thing you could do was to adopt a position of
passive acceptance. Psychologists call it ‘learned helplessness’.

Inevitably, a ticket inspector came. He was wearing a smart
dark uniform which gave him an intimidating authority that made me think of the
Gestapo. I handed him the lump of papier-mâché that had once been my ticket. He
screwed up his eyes as he examined it, then looked back at me, then back at the
ticket, and then at me again, and with an air of complete disbelief said “Votre
billet, Monsieur?” “Votre billet?”

“Billet” – it’s the French word for ticket.

I was lucky. He concluded
he was dealing with a silly and frightened young English idiot and let me get
off at Bruxelles-Midi.

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About Me

I grew up in Yorkshire and worked in Leeds before going to university late. I then lived in various places around the U.K. before moving back to Yorkshire where I now live with my wife and family. This memoir is based on people, places, things and events I knew, with some names and details altered to avoid difficulties. I hope to post once or twice each month.